Intertemporal Trade Research Articles

Market potential and the industrial sectors inclusion sequence in China's national carbon emission trading: From the perspective of maximizing gains

The carbon emission trading scheme (CETS) has been gradually introduced in China to control carbon emissions and boost economic and social development. The existing literature has evaluated the market potential of pilot CETSs or a certain industry, yet no study has focused on the industrial sectors to be covered in the national CETS to analyze trading flexibility and the sector inclusion sequence. This study presents an analytical framework for estimating market potential (i.e., potential gains and carbon emission reduction potential) and industrial sector inclusion sequences for China's national CETS using by-production models. Three simulation scenarios (i.e., no-trading scenario, power sector trading scenario, and multiple-industry trading scenario) and two trading modes (i.e., contemporary and intertemporal trading mode) are simultaneously considered. The novel evidences are: (i) There would be 39.93% (27.7 trillion CNY), 65.26% (273.0 trillion CNY) and 159.42% (666.7 trillion CNY) national aggregated potential gains of CETS in intertemporal power sector trading scenario, contemporary multiple-industry trading scenario and intertemporal multiple-industry trading scenario, and they would help save 3.60%, 5.18% and 6.05% of CO2 emissions reduction, respectively. (ii) CO2 emission permits would transfer from nonmetal minerals, ferrous metals, and electricity, to paper making, non-ferrous metals, petrochemicals, and chemicals under the intertemporal multiple-industry trading simulation. (iii) Based on the principle of potential gain maximization, it is recommended that the sector of smelting and processing of non-ferrous metals should to be included as the next sector in national CETS. The results show that national CETS has great market potential for achieving China's joint carbon control and economic growth goals.

The impact of technological innovation for emission reduction on decision-making for intertemporal carbon trading

Trading carbon emissions is a common strategy for reducing emissions around the world. But its flawless and methodical parameter adjustments and coping strategies nonetheless lack a theoretical grounding when faced with the prospect of uncertainty. To analyze how the enterprise emission path might be made compatible with the social emission path by policy adjustment, this study illustrates the impact of the uncertainty of technical innovation for emission reduction on the decision to engage in intertemporal carbon trading. The findings demonstrate that the decision to engage in intertemporal carbon trading is significantly impacted by the uncertainty of technological innovation for emission reduction. Enterprise productivity is directly correlated with technological innovation for emission reduction. When a policy instrument is used for adjustment, the probability of technological innovation for emission reduction is inversely related to the intertemporal trading banking rate and the price of carbon tax per unit product, whereas it is proportional to the intertemporal trading borrowing rate. This is taking the goal of maximizing social welfare as the constraint. The results serve as a guide for creating more logical parameters for intertemporal carbon trading legislation.

Economics of Intellectual Capital (6): Global Reserve Assets as a Solution to the Monetary Trilemma under Intertemporal Trade

Economics of Intellectual Capital (6): Global Reserve Assets as a Solution to the Monetary Trilemma under Intertemporal Trade

Intertemporal Hedging and Trade in Repeated Games With Recursive Utility

Two key features distinguish the general class of recursive preferences from the standard model of dynamic choice: (i) agents may care about the intertemporal distribution of risk, and (ii) their rates of time preference, rather than being fixed, may vary with the level of consumption. We investigate what these features imply in the context of a repeated strategic interaction. First, we show that opportunities for intertemporal trade may expand the set of feasible payoffs relative to that in a static interaction. Two distinct sources for such trade are identified: endogenous heterogeneity in the players' rates of time preference and a hedging motive pertaining to the intertemporal distribution of risk. The set of equilibrium payoffs may on the other hand shrink drastically as many efficient outcomes become unsustainable no matter the level of patience. This “antifolk” result occurs when the players prefer stage outcomes to be positively correlated rather than independent across time. Intuitively, such preferences make it inefficient to offset short‐term losses with future gains, while this is needed to ensure that security levels are met on path. We also establish a folk theorem: if security levels are met on path, such play can be sustained in a subgame perfect equilibrium provided that the players are sufficiently patient.

The design of the intertemporal trading ratio of carbon quotas

Carbon emission trading achieves both economic and environmental benefits. The imbalance between quota supply and demand restricts the development of the carbon market. The key to solving the issue is to set a reasonable intertemporal trading ratio. Currently, the study of carbon trading ignores the influence of environmental externalities, which leads to the deviation of market participants' behavior choices and government policy making. Considering the influence of non-price factors, taking environmental externalities as the cut-in point, use the optimal control method to analyze the issue of carbon quota conversion, and to make clear the driving factors and mechanism of the intertemporal trading ratio. Results show that the condition of choosing an optimal intertemporal trading ratio is when the value path of per-unit carbon emissions is equal to the marginal cost path of emission reduction. The intertemporal trading ratio depends on the firm discount rate, the natural attenuation rate of carbon emissions, the ratio of the social marginal damage value to the social marginal cost of emission reduction, and the combination effect among marginal cost of emission reduction, marginal profit of production from purchasing carbon quota and price of carbon transaction. The effect of different driving factors on the intertemporal trading ratio is heterogeneous in different situations. The results provide a reference for setting reasonable parameters of carbon trading policy.

Energy trading efficiency in ERCOT’s day-ahead and real-time electricity markets

The efficient market hypothesis (EMH) is a fundamental tenet of active and unfettered market trading. The EMH for intertemporal trading of a commodity such as natural gas implies that today’s futures price is an unbiased predictor of a future delivery period’s spot price and that the difference between today’s futures and spot prices reflects the commodity’s cost of carrying. The EMH for inter-regional trading requires the commodity’s regional price difference to equal the inter-regional transportation cost. Using regional hourly data for January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2020 from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), we investigate whether the EMH is empirically valid in all ERCOT’s wholesale electricity markets and, if not, the extent of ERCOT’s energy trading inefficiency and what can be done to reduce it. By estimating a parsimonious system of eight price-level regressions and four price-difference regressions, we reject the interday EMH for all regions and the inter-regional EMH for all regional market pairs. However, ERCOT’s extent of trading inefficiency is mild when compared to the wholesale energy prices. Our empirical examples have two policy implications: enhancing ERCOT’s interday trading efficiency entails improving the day-ahead forecasts for solar and wind generation and refining ERCOT’s indicative real-time market prices, while enhancing ERCOT’s inter-regional trading efficiency requires transmission capacity expansion to reduce transmission congestion and line losses.

Self-accessibility and repeated games with asymmetric discounting

We propose a simple geometric construct called ‘self-accessibility’ to study discounted infinitely repeated games with perfect monitoring. Self-accessibility delivers payoffs by computing action paths that keep all continuation payoff vectors close to the target payoff. It unifies the analysis of games with symmetric and asymmetric discounting, dispenses with public randomization, and generates pure on-path strategies. We first use it to simplify Fudenberg and Maskin (1986, 1991) and generalize their results to asymmetric discounting. Next, we use self-accessibility to find all payoff profiles that are realizable via some path at some (possibly asymmetric) discount vector. Finally, we offer an easily-verifiable sufficient and almost necessary condition for a payoff profile to arise in a subgame-perfect equilibrium, and use self-accessibility to explicitly construct the corresponding equilibrium strategies. We show that achieving cooperation via intertemporal trade among unequally patient players may require very different arrangements from those proposed earlier by Lehrer and Pauzner (1999) for two players using public randomization.

Asymmetries of financial openness in an optimal growth model

This paper analyzes international borrowing and lending in an optimal growth model with adjustment costs for investment, under both pre-commitment and lack of pre-commitment to debt repayment. We study the dynamics of the current account in the transition towards the balanced growth path, and derive the implications of financial openness for both the transition path and the balanced growth path. A comparison with financial autarky reveals that, under pre-commitment, and to the extent that countries start from different initial conditions, financial openness is beneficial for both poor and rich countries, as it allows them to engage in mutually beneficial inter-temporal trade. During the adjustment process, relatively poor countries experience higher consumption and investment compared to autarky, and thus experience current account deficits and accumulate net foreign debt. The inter-temporal tradeoff is asymmetric between poor and rich countries, in that poor countries experience lower steady state consumption, due to the need to service their accumulated foreign debt while the opposite happens in relatively rich countries. Under non pre-commitment, this asymmetric inter-temporal tradeoff results in a time inconsistency problem. Poor countries reach a point in the adjustment process after which it is welfare improving for them to default on their foreign debt. In the absence of pre-commitment mechanisms, international lenders anticipate these incentives, and international lending and borrowing breaks down. This time inconsistency problem can thus explain both the Feldstein-Horioka puzzle and the Lucas paradox that capital does not flow from rich to poor countries. Credible sanctions in the case of default and ceilings on international borrowing are analyzed as partial solutions to the time-inconsistency problem caused by this asymmetry between poor and ‘rich’ countries.

Opportunity and marginal abatement cost savings from China's pilot carbon emissions permit trading system: Simulating evidence from the industrial sectors

China has launched pilot carbon emissions permit trading schemes (ETS) in seven regions since 2013/2014 and has established a nationwide ETS in the power industry by the end of 2017. Recent literature has evaluated China's seven pilot regions on design aspects of the ETS, and yet little is known about the potential recovery of economic output loss through introducing the ETS. This study considers the recovery of industrial value added loss and thus measures the abatement cost savings from trading to evaluate the necessity and feasibility of China's pilot ETSs. The analysis develops a parametric and nonparametric combined technique to calculate the opportunity abatement cost savings (i.e., potential abatement cost savings and unrealized abatement cost savings) and marginal abatement cost savings (i.e., changes on carbon shadow prices) in China's pilot ETSs during 2011–2015. It additionally provides an estimation of potential carbon emissions reduction from ETS. Both cross-industrial trading and intertemporal trading are considered, and three simulations, defined as no trading, cross-industrial trading, and cross-industrial and intertemporal trading, are conducted. We found that, i) 1–16% potential abatement cost savings and 2–12% unrealized abatement cost savings would be identified in China's pilot ETS regions. ii) 0.5–33% and 1.6–25% carbon emissions reduction potential would be realized respectively by introducing ETS and eliminating the operational inefficiency of the ETS. iii) Marginal abatement cost savings would both exist in almost all regions if the ETS were implemented and if the ETS were fully operational.

Optimal progressivity with age-dependent taxation

This paper studies optimal taxation of earnings when the degree of tax progressivity is allowed to vary with age. The setting is an overlapping-generations model that incorporates irreversible skill investment, flexible labor supply, ex ante heterogeneity in the disutility of work and the cost of skill acquisition, partially insurable wage risk, and a life cycle productivity profile. An analytically tractable version of the model without intertemporal trade is used to characterize and quantify the salient trade-offs in tax design. The key results are that progressivity should be U-shaped in age and that the average marginal tax rate should be increasing and concave in age. These findings are confirmed in a version of the model with borrowing and saving that we solve numerically.

Welfare Ranking of Emissions Taxes, Cap & Trade, and Banking & Borrowing

Under asymmetric information between firms and a regulator, intertemporal trade of pollution permits can increase welfare relative to both emissions taxes and cap and trade (quotas). In the subgame perfect equilibrium, banking and borrowing dominates taxes and quotas for a large region of parameter space provided that cost shocks are positively correlated and the trading phase is not too long. We show how to determine the optimal length of a trading phase, and explain why it is typically short. In the open loop setting banking and borrowing is likely to be a good alternative for quotas but not for taxes.

Storage infrastructure and agricultural yield: evidence from a capital investment subsidy scheme

Abstract In a developing economy, the availability of storage infrastructure is considered essential for two purposes; the reduction of post-harvest losses resulting in food shortage, and allowing for gains from inter-temporal trade due to potential arbitrage opportunities arising out of volatility in food grain prices. This paper provides empirical evidence on a lesser studied impact of storage infrastructure, viz, agricultural yield. The author exploits potentially exogenous variation generated by the intensity of access to a capital investment subsidy program for construction and renovation of rural godowns in India to identify causal effects of better storage on yield. He finds that the program led to an increase in rice yield by 0.3 tons per hectare, approximately a 20% increase compared to the baseline. A potential mediating channel for such an effect would be reduced storage costs facilitating better investments in productive inputs. As supportive evidence, the author finds that fertilizer consumption increased by 21% in response to the intervention.

The intertemporal risk-Return relation, investor behavior, and technical trading profits: evidence from the G-7 countries

ABSTRACTThe intertemporal risk-return relation and investor behavior are both important pricing factors that jointly determine the expected market risk premium. Using the price adjustment process as a control variable, we find that the intertemporal risk-return relation is positive conditional on bad market news, but is non-positive conditional on good market news. This implies that good (bad) market news weakens (strengthens) the positive risk-return relation. The pattern in the distortion of the risk-return relation is consistent with short-term mispricing in which investors overvalue (undervalue) the stock market in reaction to good (bad) market news. We also show that ignoring the price adjustment process in the estimation of the risk-return relation leads to model misspecification and induces an upward (downward) bias in estimates of the relative risk aversion parameter conditional on good (bad) news. Our model of the asymmetric risk-return relation along with the price adjustment process is capable of generating the return dynamics that is attributable to technical trading profits. We suggest that the profitability of technical trading rules is not a violation of market efficiency, but a consequence of trading rules exploiting the asymmetric effect of price changes on the risk-return relation, along with the persistence property of price changes.

Temporal restrictions on emissions trading and the implications for the carbon futures market: Lessons from the EU emissions trading scheme

Prohibiting the intertemporal trading of emission allowances induces positive risk premia in futures prices when the trading of the contracts and their expiry take place in time periods separated by this trading ban. In Phase I of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) these were in the order of about 28% of the futures price on average, depending on the contract's expiry in Phase II. Environmental policy makers should avoid such restrictions as they result in increased hedging costs for polluters that are, since emission allowances represent opportunity costs, potentially borne by consumers.

Do foreign institutional investors herd in emerging markets? A study of individual stocks

This paper attempts to examine the presence of herd behavior among the foreign institutional investors (FIIs) when investing in Indian stock market. We also examine the impact of herding in FIIs on stock returns using panel regression approach. We apply the measure suggested by Lakonishok et al. (J Financ Econ 32(1):23–43, 1992), hereafter referred as LSV, to detect the buy-side and the sell-side herding in the Indian stock market. In order to find out intertemporal trading pattern of FIIs, we also use SIAS model. This paper makes use of daily data of 50 stocks of S&P CNX Nifty to achieve the goals. The study also tries to develop a volume-based herding ratio to extend the findings. The results support the evidence of presence of both buy-side and sell-side herding in the Indian stock market. The results based on panel regression approach highlights the destabilizing effect of FIIs in the Indian stock market that may be an issue of concern for the regulators.

Repeated Games with Endogenous Discounting

The paper studies infinitely repeated games in which the players’ rates of time preference may evolve over time, depending on what transpires in the game. A key result is that in any first best equilibrium of the repeated prisoners’ dilemma, the players must eventually cooperate. If we assume that the players become more patient as they obtain better outcomes, we show that cooperation prevails from the beginning of the game and is thus the unique outcome of any first best equilibrium. The latter result is suitably extended to all symmetric two player games. A separate contribution of the paper is to propose a framework in which intertemporal trade can emerge as a first best equilibrium of a repeated strategic interaction, generating predictions that differ from those in the standard framework.

Inter-Temporal Purchasing Power Parity

We adapt the Casselian version of purchasing power parity to a two-period framework. In this framework, we show that inter-temporal trade plays a role and can drive a wedge between the nominal exchange rate and relative prices. The size of trade flows, the real interest rate, and the constraint on trade balance over two periods establish the conditions under which Casselian and inter-temporal purchasing power parity hold. We test our model using consumer price indices and bilateral trade flows between the United States and the United Kingdom. We find evidence favorable to inter-temporal purchasing power parity.

On the connections between intra-temporal and intertemporal trades

This paper develops a new theory of international economics by introducing Heckscher–Ohlin features of intra-temporal trade into an intertemporal trade approach of current account. To do so, we consider a dynamic general equilibrium model with tradable sectors of different factor intensities, which allows for substitution between intertemporal trade (current account adjustment) and intra-temporal trade (goods trade). An economy's response to a shock generally involves a combination of a change in the composition of goods trade and a change in the current account. Flexible factor markets reduce the need for the current account to adjust. On the other hand, the more rigid the factor markets, the larger the size of current account adjustment relative to the volume of goods trade, and the slower the speed of adjustment of the current account towards its long-run equilibrium. We present empirical evidence consistent with the theory.

Optimal Energy Consumption Model for Smart Grid Households With Energy Storage

In this paper, we propose to model the energy consumption of smart grid households with energy storage systems as an intertemporal trading economy. Intertemporal trade refers to transaction of goods across time when an agent, at any time, is faced with the option of consuming or saving with the aim of using the savings in the future or spending the savings from the past. Smart homes define optimal consumption as either balancing/leveling consumption such that the utility company is presented with a uniform demand or as minimizing consumption costs by storing energy during off-peak time periods when prices are lower and use the stored energy during peak time periods when prices are higher. Due to the varying nature of energy requirements of household and market energy prices over different time periods in a day, households face a trade-off between consuming to meet their current energy requirements and/or storing energy for future consumption and/or spending energy stored in the past. These trade-offs or consumption preferences of the household are modeled as utility functions using consumer theory. We introduce two different utility functions, one for cost minimization and another for consumption balancing/leveling, that are maximized subject to respective budget, consumption, storage and savings constraints to solve for the optimum consumption profile. The optimization problem of a household with energy storage is formulated as a geometric program for consumption balancing/leveling, while cost minimization is formulated as a linear programming problem. Simulation results show that the proposed model achieves extremely low peak to average ratio in the consumption balancing/leveling scheme with about 8% reduction in consumption costs and the least possible amount for electricity bill with about 12% reduction in consumption costs in the cost minimization scheme.

Intertemporal links in cap-and-trade schemes

In a two-period general equilibrium model, I study the effects of intertemporal emission permit trading in a cap-and-trade scheme when firms' investments in abatement have long-term effects. To meet their caps, firms optimally choose levels of trading and investment in each period by equalizing the marginal benefit of abatement to the marginal cost of abatement in each period. The fact that investments have long-term effects introduces new effects: investments in period 1 have both an additional benefit (the reduction of emissions in period 2) and an additional cost (the decrease in abatement opportunities in period 2). This changes the standard condition of equalization of marginal costs across periods for cost-effectiveness. Without intertemporal trading, some investments in period 1 are entirely driven by second-period abatement needs. In that case, allowing intertemporal trading may reduce investment in period 1 as some long-term investments are substituted by intertemporal permit trading. Descriptive evidence from the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) illustrates this potential effect.